Dedalus on the Occult and Russian Decadents
The Dedalus Book of the Occult (subtitled The Dark Muse) is one of Gary Lachman's lighter weight
excursions into the history of the esoteric but it is well worth having
in the Library. In effect, it is a series of suggestive and
rather entertaining biographies from the Enlightenment world of
Swedenborg, Mesmer and Cagliostro to the modernist occultism of the much
less well known Daumal, Milosz and Lowry.
There are just over 40
of these pen portraits under five occultist headings (Enlightenment,
Romantic, Satanic, Fin de Siecle and Modernist) with good short
introductions to each section. It is a book that can be usefully 'dipped
into' whenever one of the 40 pops up somewhere else.
The last
quarter or so is a smattering of original texts, perhaps somewhat hard
to fathom out of their full context and in an order that may have its
own occult meaning but which passed me by yet useful to have available
nonetheless. Certainly, for all its lack of depth, this is well
recommended as an enjoyable reference source and as the starting point for
further study into a cultural phenomenon that still acts as a strong
undercurrent in European life and literature.
Subtitled Perversity, Despair and Collapse, The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence is for those who want to fill the gap in their knowledge of
Russian culture - late nineteenth century Western decadence tended to
elide into even greater pessimism, despair and gloom as it got closer to Moscow. It
also tended to be very derivative of Western forms and preoccupations.
It
might be far too easy to read predictions of Revolution in what is,
mostly, a rather predictable melange of adolescent lust, late nineteenth
century misogyny and bourgeois confusion at the social requirements of a
very slowly modernising society. However, there are two discoveries that make this book worth acquiring.
The first is Valery Briusov's imagination. His
"The Diary of a Psychopath" is Poe recast, well before its time, for
the world of virtual reality. "The Republic of the Southern Cross" can
stand alongside Verne and Wells and offers an interesting cultural
precursor to the apocalyptic tradition in Hollywood horror.
"The
Last Martyrs" is more classically decadent but less impressive - and it
falls into the classic trap of its period. Like other decadent
works, it demands the sort of pornographic detail that can only be
implied because of what is permitted socially. As a result,
Briusov, far from appearing truly decadent, seems, at these times,
repressed and Victorian - showing his metaphorical willy and then running
away giggling as a naughty little boy who wants to be chastised. This is
a problem with all 'naughty' literature in repressed times - it cannot
really say what it means.
The second, more solid discovery, is
Leonid Andreyev, already better known in the West in recent years, whose
three representative stories take the time to delve into the dark side
of adolescent disturbance without the weakness of romanticism. The
final tale by Andreyev in this book, 'The Story of Sergey Petrovich',
with its odd mix of inner disturbance, peer pressure and ideas
inadequately understood, could be read with profit while watching
YouTube for signs of the next teenage gunman.
Andreyev is a
not-so-minor master and makes the other tales in the book look mannered
(although the woman writer Zinaida Gippius almost reaches Andreyev levels
of insight with 'The Moon-Ants'). As for the poetry, well let us just be
charitable and say that it might be better read in the Russian.
All
in all, a book of a particular time and a place but, if this edition is
taken as evidence of Russian culture at the turn of the last century,
then the gloom and depression of Russian youth and of the aesthetic wing
of its intelligentsia suggest that, while revolutions are never
inevitable, the loss of will to go on amongst the Russian bourgeoisie
may have been a factor in the rise of radical modernism in Russian culture and
the initial welcoming of a clean Soviet break.